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Month: October 2018

Because Autumn is winding down (in some places), Winter is closing in (not quite yet, please), and it’s the end of another work week, I thought I’d share some of the things that have amused me, inspired me or educated me recently.

First on the docket, a cool way to create a hand embroidered look with machine embroidery. Many people like the timeless look of cross stitch, but don’t want to count the stitches. This post from Creative Machine Embroidery Magazine discusses how to create the look of cross stitch on your embroidery machine. It’s a pretty extensive tutorial.

Second on the list, the news that there is now a way to create sublimated items without a sublimation system. Our own Tom Chambers tells you all about how to sublimate without a sublimation system in a terrific blog post on the SubliStuff blog. Tom has been writing a couple of posts a month about various sublimation topics for that blog, so if you do sublimation or are interested in learning more about sublimation, it would be a good idea to bookmark the SubliStuff blog so you can come back to it later.

Third at bat, a post from Erich Campbell, part of his Ghost and the Embroidery Machine series for the Mr X Stitch blog. In this post, he’s talking about how to make machine embroidery and digitizing accessible for everyone. He gives some great ideas for how people on limited budgets can learn the skills they need to start their own machine embroidery businesses. It’s a terrific post that outlines many of the options available to those who are interested in embroidery.

Fourth in line, although I don’t usually plug posts I write myself when I do these round-ups, I’m going to make an exception this time. I did a series on pricing for this blog and I think, if I do say so myself, it’s worth a read. Part 1 talks about gathering data. Part 2 talks about actually setting prices and how to communicate pricing info to your customers. Part 3 talks about dealing with customers who want to argue or negotiate price.

Finally, I need to point out this video of the 2RegularGuys podcast today. The guests were Carolyn Cagle from Strikke Embroidery and Luiz Vitor Neto Mendes from Vitor Digitizing. It was a fantastic and fascinating interview with a lot of food for thought in it. Definitely worth a watch, and I’m not just saying that because Carolyn called me one of her favorite people in the world at the end of the interview. The link takes you to the video on Facebook. When it’s available on their site as well, I’ll update the post.